Steam emitting heads for steam rooms and the like.
There have been a wide variety of steam head designs for use in conjunction with steam rooms. There are certain basic considerations or requirements for such a steam head. Desirably the steam head will disperse the steam generally evenly throughout the room. The hot steam should not be injected directly into the room, as in a stream generally normal to the surface of the room walls, as this would provide a serious hazard to the users of the steam room. Rather the steam flow should the generally parallel to or flush with the surface of the room walls. This also facilitates distribution of the steam throughout the room. To achieve these objectives, many prior art steam heads permanently projected into the steam room where they provided hazards to the steam room users should the users brushed or stumble against such protruding heads.
Some prior art steam heads only extended away from the wall when steam was being delivered into the steam room. Such steam heads were retracted to generally aligned or flush relationship to the wall when steam was not being delivered into the room. However such extending and retracting steam heads often involve the substantial cost and difficulty of installation and maintenance of electrical or and/or hydraulic control lines. Such complexity increased the risk of malfunction or non-function. Further, any use of electricity in a steam room environment poses a potential safety hazard and at the very least requires special equipment and precautions.
FIGS. 1 and 2 illustrate a prior art steam head H. The forward end E of the steam head extends outwardly into the steam room. That forward end has one or more transversely directed steam outlets O from which steam can flow in the direction shown by the small arrows, i.e., generally parallel to the surface of the supporting steam room wall W. As noted above, such perpetually projecting forward end of the steam head presents a hazard to the users of the steam room.
FIG. 3 illustrates one presently preferred embodiment of the invention. This steam head includes a housing having a steam inlet and a front wall having a steam outlets in the form of a plurality of vents. The housing may be conveniently mounted on an upright steam room wall with the forward end of the housing generally aligned with the wall, and with the remainder of the housing extending rearwardly behind the wall. The outlet vents are normally substantially closed by an overlying plate section that is normally disposed generally flush with the forward end of the housing. Only when substantial steam is to be admitted into the steam room does the plate section move forwardly a short distance, such as xc2xc of an inch, from the outlet vents to allow such steam flow. In the illustrated steam head such forward movement of the plate section is caused by a wax filled thermostat that is connected to the plate section. The thermostat automatically responds to a flow of steam into the head housing. Thus the illustrated steam head this self-contained, requiring no electrical or hydraulic connections, or even battery power. The outlets are opened automatically when steam is allowed into the head housing. The outlets are automatically closed when flow of steam into the housing is terminated; the movement of the plate section which thus closes the outlet vents thereby returns the plate section to the flush position generally aligned with the housing front wall and the room wall. Since the front end of the head housing does not have to extend outwardly into the room sufficiently to accommodate transversely directed steam outlets, that extension can be a minimum amount, as for example xe2x85x9c of an inch.
Another preferred embodiment of steam head is illustrated in FIGS. 5-7. This steam head it is similar to the steam head shown in FIG. 3 and operates in a similar manner.